Primary talks

I was thinking about some of the Primary talks I gave as a kid.

What started me thinking about this is that in first grade, I wanted to give a St. Patrick's Day talk. I had seen Kenny Christiansen give a Thanksgiving talk, so I wanted to do a relevant holiday talk myself. I talked to my mom about it, and she told me the story of St. Patrick teaching the Godhead with a shamrock. Although he was actually teaching the Trinity, which we profess not to believe in. Before the day, we went to Kmart and bought me a tie that had some green in it; it was my first non-clip-on tie. I think it was a bit of an ugly tie--maybe brighter tie colors weren't popular then. I kind of cringe at the idea of giving that talk in church, for a few reasons.

(However, as an aside, I think we Mormons believe in the Trinity more than we think we do, because I've talked to many people of other faiths who tend to believe what we do. We DO believe that Christ is God, we DO believe he is the Jehovah of the Old Testament. He's just not the Father. The Jehovah's Witnesses believe Jesus is inferior to Jehovah, so they don't believe in the Trinity, but we believe he IS Jehovah. It's more of a semantic issue.)

One Sunday when I was seven, I gave a talk about Alma and the four sons of Mosiah. After I gave it, I was asked to give it in sacrament meeting. I didn't practice before sacrament meeting, which was a bad idea. I remember standing there and not saying anything, so one of my parents came up and reminded me what I was saying. I remember crying afterwards because I was so embarrassed. My mom tells me that I had forgotten one of the names, but when I was reminded of it, I finished the talk. I don't remember than part. 

I remember one Sunday morning writing up the story of the First Vision on our old computer, the one where the printer paper was all connected and you had to tear off the hole-punched sides. I wrote the story down from memory.

Once I gave a talk about singing. During the opening song, I watched how many people sang. I wasn't surprised that Jaydon Bean didn't sing, but I was surprised that David Christensen didn't. When I gave my talk, I said that I had watched during opening exercises and noticed that most of the people singing were the teachers. Afterwards, my mom said that was a mature thing to do.

After my aunt Darleen died, I gave a talk about springtime and the Resurrection. I remember one teacher (Sue Palmer?) asking us later how my aunt was related to us.

I had a preoccupation with the Second Coming, so I wanted to give a talk about it. My mom had looked up some signs of the Second Coming. I remember talking about "baby flies, called maggots." I'm not sure where my mom got her information, whether it was doctrinal and whether it was meant to be taken literally.

I gave a talk that had been a family staple about an unusual animal at the zoo. One of the Primary leaders held up the flannel board while I put up the pieces.

Once I gave a talk about Saul's conversion to become Paul.

After a trip to Kirtland when I was eleven, I gave a talk about Section 110 of the Doctrine and Covenants. I was reading what I wrote down and I pronounced "Elias" as "ELL-ee-us" instead of "ee-LY-us." I felt really dumb about that, and I remember talking to my grandparents on the phone about it. They told me I shouldn't worry and cited an example of a General Authority messing up, but it didn't comfort me.

Those are all the talks I can think of at the moment.